“Last week we didn’t see Apple’s thinnest products ever, but its thinnest event ever,” Tom Goodwin writes for TechCrunch. “From a company obsessed with reductivism, we saw an event with little actual news and zero unexpected surprises — just simple linear iterations of devices we’ve seen countless time before.”

“And for a company that defined conventional marketing, we saw a lot of tricks like line filling and lifecycle marketing that used to only be used by lesser companies,” Goodwin writes. “Instead, we now have 77 SKU’s of iPad to chase ever dwindling sales.”

“Maybe the lesson is this: we shouldn’t be focusing on hardware anymore. Perhaps instead we need to focus on what happens when hardware and software come together,” Goodwin writes. “Traditionally, this is where Apple succeeded. Developing software and hardware together made Apple products ‘just work.'”

“Everything was simple, reliable, and easy. Yet from a totally nonsensical product like iTunes, to the unchangingly disastrous Apple Maps, to the bugs of botched iOS updates, to the clearly unfinished Apple TV software, that’s clearly no longer the case,” Goodwin writes. “In fact, it’s the failures of the Apple TV that shine a light into the future of products as a combination of hardware, software, and partnerships.”

MacDailyNews Take: And, after a detour fighting against U.S. government overreach, back we go, to the same old post-Steve issue about which we’ve been talking for years now: Attention to detail or lack thereof and accountability.

We are longtime Mac users. From Apple products and services we expect and demand excellence at the very least (excellence, not perfection). In fact, it was Apple themselves, under Steve Jobs, who conditioned us to expect the excellence of Apple-level quality. That is what we pay for. When it does not exist, we will complain vociferously.

Furthermore, something along the lines of Amazon Echo is what Apple should have done if run by competent, forward-thinking management. When Apple finally does do their version of Amazon Echo (and they will get around to doing such a product eventually) they will rightly be called a follower. The company had all of the ingredients to make their own Echo, before Amazon, except for the vision, it seems.

It’s one thing to be a social justice crusader, it’s quite another to be a visionary tech CEO. Tim Cook seems drawn to the former while, still, the jury remains out regarding the latter. Still, even a mere caretaker CEO should be capable of demanding excellence from his employees – or else.

Are those responsible for such things as botched iOS updates that brick devices or an Apple TV release where a “beta” tag would have been exceedingly generous being held accountable? Or are they just getting more and more RSUs, regardless of their failures to satisfactorily perform their jobs?

The fact that it is making so much money is a key factor in the number of complaints. Consider:

In the “Good Old Days” when the Mac was in a fight for its survival, any given Apple model had a user base in the hundreds of thousands. A bug that affected 0.1% hit a few hundred users, most of whom waited quietly for the inevitable fix after the initial dozen complaints.

Today, a bug that affects 0.1% still has a 50% chance of getting past 1000 beta testers, but could easily hit a hundred thousand users, hundreds of whom will go online to call for Tim Cook’s firing.

Success is not always its own reward. The only way to get back to the Good Old Days when an Apple bug affected only a handful of people and created hardly any bad press is to cut Apple’s sales volume by roughly three orders of magnitude. I don’t think that would please Wall Street or Apple’s stockholders any more than the current situation.

This may be the most insightful post here. “Back in the good ole days” there was only the Mac, and maybe the iPod, and there were a few million of them (maybe). Today, there are over ONE BILLION iOS and MacOS devices. If a problem only impacts .01% (1/10000 – one out of ten thousand), that means that 100,000+ users are affected.

Adding to the problem are the multiplication of devices and OS versions. The localization to major markets other than the US (can you say C-H-I-N-A ?) also consumes huge resources.

For those who imagine that it would be different if Steve Jobs was alive, let me remind you of cracks in the G4 Cubes, the hockey puck mouse, the problems with MobileMe, the crippling limitations in the first iPhone OS, the burgeoning issues in OS X until the clean-up in Snow Leopard, the dumbing down of iMovie, etc. etc. All under Steve. And that was in a MUCH simpler time.

Yes, Apple needs to focus. I wish it would stop with the annual OS updates, especially for the Mac, and work instead on refining the software. But suggesting Apple is doomed is just juvenile.

The good old days didn’t have The Internet with its anonymising culture of drive-by snark attacks, social media for like-minded trolls to coalesce in banana slug trails, and the devolution of journalism into a toolset for corporate manipulation of consumers and voters.

As if journalism wasn’t manipulative before the internet. LOL 3-4 TV stations and a half-dozen major newspapers, ALL liberal-left, that was good? I’ll bet you think Walter Cronkite was objective and moderate too? Laugh riot.

Ralph M

Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - 11:41 am ·

Walter Cronkite was – for many years – identified by Americans as the “most trusted man” in the country. Interestingly, CBS never used that as a marketing slogan – it was just a fact that everyone knew and agreed with.

You, Nick, are just an ignorant reactionary who wasn’t even born when Cronkite signed off for the last time.

MS makes money. Beats made money. Conclusion: making $$ isn’t the marker of excellence.
MDN’s words are right-on. The conversation is all about excellence and honest criticism is absolutely needed. Gone, or seemingly slipping away, is the Job’s pride in saying “no” to a creation b/c it didn’t cross into excellence, or meet the Apple ideal.

It’s what HomeKit or AppleTV should be doing, it would have been the killer App. Indeed leaving up to both we were led to believe a combination of the two would be doing something very similar. What worries me most is that surely Jony Ive should be fulfilling this role but as mother thread suggested is dignifies the by his absence even behind the scenes.

Echo is doing more TODAY…but it’s one object in one room. My phone, and esp. my watch are there all the time. I don’t need to buy one for every room or change the way I act because I’m not in the kitchen — I can be in the bedroom, on the deck, in the car, or at a restaurant and have the same solution. Siri will catch up, and when it does, the fact it’s on your wrist will be a huge advantage.

If your job is to be the CEO of a company, to lead the company in developing great products and services, and you’re running your mouth on social justice issues, you’re not doing your job. You may be absolutely right on every position you take, but none of them have a bloody thing to do with improving products and services and introducing products and services. So you fail.

In addition, what you call “social justice” is what many people call meddling in the affairs of others.

Apple has its largest cluster of U.S. facilities in the San Jose/San Francisco area, where there are a lot of people who find those “social justice” issues far from irrelevant. Apple’s second largest domestic site is in Austin, where similar values prevail in the tech community. If Apple were perceived as hostile to LGBT issues, it would be at a serious disadvantage in hiring.

So, it is simply not the case that the perception of corporate attitudes on those issues has nothing to do with the quality of products. It has quite a lot to do with having the widest range of qualified applicants for every position to design, test, and make those products. For his time, Steve Jobs was even more adamant than Tim Cook about maintaining an inclusive company.

I don’t see the conflict between doing one’s job and having a social persona. How exactly does one detract from the other? Also, Thelonious Mac, social justice is clear, despite objections from traditionalists immemorial who decried it as meddling.

Exactly. Everyone should applaud Tim Cook for laying the groundwork where we can finally have American public bathrooms where young girls and men of various ages and sexual identities can intermingle and get to know one another.

I suppose, then, that everyone should applaud the North Carolina Legislature for laying the groundwork where young girls are forced by statute to mingle in public restrooms with big, hairy individuals who identify as male, dress as male, have reconstructed male genitalia, and prefer women for sex, but who were assigned to the wrong gender by the hospital that prepared their birth certificate.

This is one thing that upset me about the Apple TV. With every iOS product they make they usually make an app to show it off and show the potential. With the new Apple TV they really didn’t do that. It would have been nice of them to make an app that showcased the full potential of the Apple TV.

If Apple launches that product and sells a few million, it is a failure. The size of Apple changes the dynamic. They have an overall plan, and they are sticking to it. The Echo is an example of the Steve Jobs “No” to some good ideas.